Superb cast keeps ‘Two Trains Running’ on track
AUGUST IN APRIL: The Acting Company in partnership with American Conservatory Theater presents August Wilson’s Two Trains Running. The cast includes (from left) Robert Cornelius as West, Brian D. Coats as Holloway, Michael A. Shepperd as Memphis, James Milord as Sterling, DeAnna Supplee as Risa and Chuckie Benson as Hambone. Photo by Lore Ventura
Let’s cut right to it: the opportunity to see wonderful actors performing an August Wilson play simply should not be missed, and the actors from The Acting Company currently performing Wilson’s Two Trains Running as part of the American Conservatory Theater season at the Toni Rembe Theater, are reason enough to get your tickets.
As an added bonus, this cast is doing something hardly anyone is doing anymore: plays in repertory. In addition to the Wilson drama, they’re also performing a modern verse translation of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, so we really get to see them flexing their thespian muscles.
But back to the Wilson play. Two Trains Running isn’t the most intense or incendiary of the 10 plays in Wilson’s canonical cycle depcting African-American life in each decade of the 20th century. Rather, this play, the seventh in the cycle and set circa 1968 in Pittsburgh’s predominantly Black Hill District, feels reasonably calm – at least in terms of plot.
But what is so interesting about the drama is the way it approaches a turbulent time like the late ‘60s, when rioting followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Malcom X had been killed, protests were everywhere, and the nation was tense. All of that is part of the landscape, but Wilson’s canvas is much more specific.
COFFEE & A CORN MUFFIN: James Milord is Sterling and DeAnna Supplee is Risa. Photo by Lore Photography Ventura.
His setting is a once-popular diner owned by Memphis Lee. What had been a center for the community to feast and gather is now home to one employee (Risa, a waitress and the only woman in the play) and a scattershot selection of men from the neighborhood.
The two defining plot elements are death and money, but the bigger issues are the obstacles the Black community faced while staking claim to a share of the American dream.
For Memphis (played by the astonishing Michael A. Shepperd), his past includes the traumatic and violent loss of what he thought was going to be his life’s work, and now he’s facing the loss of his diner as the city threatens to forcibly buy his building for a price he knows is far below what he deserves. He is owed more, and he remains steadfast in his demand to get it.
Other characters also feel they’re owed – like Sterling (James Milord), fresh out of the penitentiary for bank robbery and looking to find his way, whether it’s playing the numbers racket run by the slick Wolf (J’Laney Allen), wooing Risa (the remarkably subtle and powerful DeAnna Supplee) or convincing the neighborhood’s most successful businessman, the undertaker West (Robert Cornelius) that he should be driving one of the man’s seven Cadillacs.
RUNNING THE NUMBERS: J'Laney Allen (left) is Wolf and James Milord is Sterling. Photo by Lore Photography Ventura
There’s also the enigmatic character known only as Hambone (Chuckie Benson), who is traversing the world differently and perhaps with more internal struggles than the others. He was promised a hambone as payment for a simple job, and when received a chicken instead, his focus – and the bulk of his sparse dialogue – is devoted to giving him his hambone. He knows what he was promised, and like Memphis, he is somehow going to get it.
Finding the strength and the dignity to demand your rights and what is rightfully owed is a huge part of Two Trains Running, and one of its most intriguing manifestations is in Risa, who is quietly staking her claim, or at least trying to remove herself from what a young woman might reasonably expect from life (like being a wife, raising kids). For all of Memphis’ talk about what’s right and what’s just, he doesn’t seem to notice that he doesn’t treat Risa well or with any respect (and then he wonders why his wife, who he claims to revere, has left him). She’s taking a different tack, but she is going to live life on her terms.
Director Lili-Anne Brown creates a world that feels detailed and complete. The run-down diner (set by Tanya Orellana) offers just a slice of life (and pie) but powerfully reflects the much bigger world. Her outstanding cast, which also includes Michael J. Asberry as Holloway, something like the neighborhood sage, slowly fills the lives of these characters with passion and complexity. They enliven the music of Wilson’s dialogue so that everyday language can carry the weight of dramatic poetry.
This does feel like a 1960s play, but not the stereotypical ‘60s. This feels like the lived, everyday ‘60s where the Summer of Love feels very, very far away. As Memphis says, “Freedom is heavy. You got to put your shoulder to freedom. Put your shoulder to it and hope your back hold up. And if you around here looking for justice, you got a long wait.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
The Acting Company and American Conservatory Theater present August Wilson’s Two Trains Running (in repertory with Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors) through May 4 at ACT’s Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Running time for Two Trains Running: 3 hours (including one 15-minute intermission). Tickets are $25-$130). Call 415-749-2228 or visit act-sf.org.
